ブルー・ハーツ

BLUE HEARTS

MANGA

STATUS
COMPLETE
VOLUMES
5
RELEASE
January 8, 2021
CHAPTERS
64

DESCRIPTION

"What am I doing?"

Yuuhi Nagi's high school life is already halfway over, but he still doesn't have any dreams, ambitions, or even friends in his class! Every day is boring, until he's suddenly in danger of getting held back!

A bittersweet high school drama made up of 4 potential grade repeaters with the worst grades in the class and 1 student acting as their teacher!

(Source: Pocket Comics)

CAST

Yuuhi Nagi
Toki Ichijou
Kanae Mizusawa
Fuuka Seto
Dai Yagami
Ren Shiina
Yuushi Koga
Riichi Nagi
Rio Akizuki
Arata Kaizaki
An Onoya
Rena Kariu
Kazuomi Ooga
Honoka Tamarai
Akira Inukai
Nobunaga Asaji

CHAPTERS

REVIEWS

GwynXV

55/100

Wasted potential that is too short and fumbles with the most serious of topics.

_This review contains spoilers for Blue Hearts_

__Blue Hearts deals with sensitive themes like suicide and sexual assault and as such those topics will be referenced in this review. Reader discretion advised.__

Blue Hearts is the most recent manga created by Sou Yayoi, who is known for being the creator of ReLIFE, a personal favourite manga of mine.

ReLIFE was a manga that hit heavily with me, as someone who has had feelings of wanting to return to childhood in the world of working life. Due to this, I went into Blue Hearts expecting to have a similar story but from the perspective of a character who still had time to change things. Is it what I got? Not really.

#Plot 5/10

Yuuhi Nagi is a second year high school student who is on the verge of dropping out. After being called to the principal for cheating on a test, he is given an ultimatum alongside the 4 other lowest achieving students in the school.

__"If even a single one of you is not able to reach the top 200. The four of you will be forced to repeat a year."__

This ultimatum gives us the stage for the story and introduces our 5 main characters, 
Yuuhi Nagi, our protagonist and heart of gold delinquent who is also extremely stupid.
Fuuka Seto, a popular girl who has probably the worst handled arc in the story.
Dai Yagami, a member of the kendo club and Arata Kaizaki lookalike.
Kanae Mizusawa, a formerly cheerful girl who refuses to open up.
These four are tutored by our final focus character, who is the top student of the school.
Toki Ichijou, heir to his family's hospital who is unable to pursue what he wants.

Blue Hearts is a story that dives into these five characters and their pasts, an interesting premise but the execution is another story entirely. I am not personally comfortable in my ability to discuss some of  these topics but I will make an effort to explain why they are handled extremely poorly.

The first two story arcs are in spoiler tags, due to the sensitive nature of the content. Read at your own discretion. 
<span class='markdown_spoiler'><span>Fuuka's arc revolves around her dating several boys simultaneously, with them meeting up to get their revenge on her. I'm sure you can imagine how this plays out and the aftermath is handled pretty terribly.
After the conclusion of an arc that has an ending way more optimistic than what would happen in reality, Fuuka basically remains unchanged. She's still friendly, still happy and there's basically no consequence to anything that happens with the story expecting us to believe that after this incident she would be completely unaffected. 
Sorry for not going into much detail here, but it's a topic I really don't feel comfortable about exploring deeply.
</span></span>
<span class='markdown_spoiler'><span>Mizusawa's arc is about something that happened at her previous school. Mizusawa had a childhood friend who she promised alongside Dai to go to the same high school. Unfortunately after an event involving bullying and patricide, Mizusawa's friend took her own life. 
Mizusawa believes that she is responsible, and as such refuses to open up to people around her fearing that she will hurt them too.
Despite the dark subject matter of this specific arc, I honestly felt it was the best arc in the story with a sweet ending. Yuuhi and the other members of the group help find a letter that Mizusawa's childhood friend left behind explaining that her suicide wasn't caused by Mizusawa and that she wishes for her to be happy in the future. This allows Mizusawa to move on and open herself up to the other members of the group and ends with a bittersweet visit to the friend's grave (my apologies but I just can't remember her name) where all of the 5 main characters pay their respects.</span></span>
Moving on, the next story arc is of Dai. And, to be honest, it just wasn't very interesting. After how deep the first two arcs are this one just felt a lot less important due to its resolution. Dai was a member of the kendo club, but in a duel to decide the next club Captain he was seemingly intentionally injured by his closest friend at the club and essentially forced out making him give up kendo. 
After various events, Yuuhi decides to duel the new Captain of the club to get the truth from him which leads to Dai stepping in and winning the duel. Here it is revealed that the current Captain was threatened to injure Dai and push him out otherwise the upperclassmen of the club would make the club a living hell. 
A rather underwhelming resolution, considering once this happens there's basically no repercussions for anyone involved. Not Dai, not the Captain for whistleblowing on the threat and not the upperclassmen for making the threat.

The penultimate arc is the arc of Toki, number one student at the school. During this arc, it is revealed that Toki is secretly singing for a band at a local bar after Yuuhi and Dai are roped into working there by one of Yuuhi's friends who we will be discussing later. Toki is an honour student who is also the heir to his family's hospital, this is because of his twin sister, who is transgender. I'm not really sure why that means she can't inherit the hospital, but whatever Japan. 

The arc leads to a classic school festival band show, with Toki's parents being in the audience and discovering his passion for music with them accepting his dreams and Toki's sister agreeing to take over the hospital.
This arc was kind of pointless, as from the resolution it's pretty obvious that Toki's parents had no objections to his love of singing and they just very clearly had no idea, thinking that he loved studying and wanted to be the heir. Simple communication could of resolved this a long time before the story even started and I do understand that the message is that sometimes you need to take a risk and admit that you want to do something other than what your parents wish for you, but it could have been handled a lot better.

The final arc is about our protagonist, Yuuhi, and his two friends, Ren Shiina and Yuushi Koga. It is revealed rather early on in the story that Yuuhi is an orphan and currently lives alone. Yuuhi and Ren grew up at the same orphanage, and were bullied at school for being orphans (Japanese kids are evil man what the hell) and this resulted in them retaliating, leading to the orphanage director having to step down from his position. 
Yuuhi and Ren grew up as delinquents constantly getting into fights and being outcasts from society leading to their former orphanage director deciding to... get a gang member to recruit them into his gang??????

I'm not entirely sure how this was the best course of action, but it leads to Yuuhi and Ren eventually attempting to leave the group after their friend Yuushi getting into a conflict with the leader. Yuuhi is slashed over the back by the leader, who decides to stay behind and wait to be arrested. Before being arrested, he tells Yuuhi and Ren that he will eventually return for them.

Long story short, he comes back and attempts to get Yuuhi back in the gang but decides against it once he discovers that Yuuhi has finally found his place in society and made some real friends. Of course, after brutally assaulting Ren and Yuuhi and getting himself arrested again.

Blue Hearts ends with the final exam, and surprise surprise all of the cast passed the test and everyone lived happily ever after, for some reason, despite half the cast realistically being traumatized. 

#Art 8/10
The art is pretty pleasant to look at and, similarly to ReLIFE,is in full colour. 
<img width='' src='https://i.imgur.com/SbzdjBw.png'>
There's not much to say really, the art is basically the same as ReLIFE.

#Characters 6/10
The characters were enjoyable enough, they had some good chemistry and their comedic moments were good. However, they do mostly feel one dimensional with a couple of rare instances where there is exception to this.

Enjoyment 5/10
Blue Hearts both gave me enjoyment and extreme discomfort. The moments where the manga doesn't attempt to deal with heavy topics are enjoyable and the comedy was funny at times. But the manga's extreme failure at handling serious topics is a real turn off to what could have been an enjoyable experience.

Overall 55/100
Blue Hearts had potential, it really did. But it's just nowhere near long enough. ReLIFE was over 230 chapters, whereas Blue Hearts is only 64 but tries to fit in so much more serious topics and issues that it really doesn't have the time to dive into.

Would I recommend Blue Hearts? Unfortunately I'd have to say __no__. I tried really hard to like this manga, I did, but I just couldn't. 
ReLIFE however? ReLIFE is amazing. Go read that.

This review was hard to write to be honest, but I felt I had to get it out there because the topics presented in this manga hit me in a personal way. Unfortunately I didn't come out with a positive opinion of the way they were handled. 
And finally, a quick message from Chizuru, thanks for reading.

<img width='' src='https://i.imgur.com/hUzvpu8.png'>

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